So, I was in line grumbling about the first TSA guy who had the temerity to wish me a "blessed day" when the second TSA guy shouted out, "Who owns the red suitcase?"

That would be me.

The guy took me to his little table and pulled out four little tubs of this stuff. Apparently, though I've been carting this stuff across the country for a few weeks now, the BWI TSA people are suddenly protecting us from the dangers of child's clay.

Honestly, that was his response to my comment about having brought the stuff from Denver last Friday: "The SOP has recently changed."

To be fair, he didn't have to confiscate the stuff. He offered to let me go back and check my luggage. I told him I didn't have the time, not so much on the front end but at Austin. He scoffed at me. "It takes longer to get your baggage?"

Why, yes, yes it does.

But it wasn't the scoffing that got me. It's the inconsistency. We already deal with the situation where it's somehow Kosher to bring in 9 oz of liquid if it's in three bottles that fit in a bag, but 4 oz in one bottle in the same bag is WRONG. But at least we can predict the response for that right up front.

With the clay, I was stopped at Denver on Friday, but she just tested it with her little swiper and let me go. Today in BWI it is verbotten. What's up with that?

It's worse. Because the same bag also contained this and they were going to happily let me go on my way with that stuff. The only real difference I can tell is that one comes in tubs and one comes in bags. The bags were somehow safer? Oh, please, TSA. We'd trust you to keep us safe if you could only be a little more consistent.

1 thoughtful messages from friendly readers:

zombie baby took flight
said...

Those darn terrorists and their play-doh!!

We had to declare a bottle of breastmilk when going through security last weekend. They made us take the cap off and then analyzed the fumes to make sure it really was breastmilk. I wanted to shout "CHUG! CHUG! CHUG!"